MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (17:00): Firstly, One Nation wants to thank Senator Kovacic for her matter of public importance. I will quote it: The Prime Minister promised to tackle Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union corruption, yet 15 months later one of the very people hired to stamp it out has been sacked over allegations of bribery and corruption, demonstrating that Labor's mismanagement is only protecting the problem, not fixing it One Nation agrees because we support workers.

We are the workers' party today. Labor has had many conflicts of interest in its dealings with the CFMEU over many, many years. It abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission oversight in 2022.

Labor gave the CFMEU free rein to just go for it. Channel 9's 60Minutes program on Sunday showed that violence is continuing as usual from union bosses' involvement in the CFMEU despite the administrator. Here are some quotes. 'The people who were running it are still running it, not the administrator.' 'The CFMEU remains a harbouring ground for criminals and thugs.' 'They're untouchable.' 'Bikies and gangsters still have a strong reach into the CFMEU, and they thrive within the CFMEU.' 'Thugs have a stronger position now within the CFMEU than before the administrator was appointed.' The CFMEU is a major donor to Labor's election campaigns.

Now consider Australia's largest wage theft case, with casual coalminers in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley losing their entitlements, losing their pay and being grossly underpaid. I want to thank Stuart Bonds from the Hunter for raising it back in 2019. We've been pursuing it ever since.

That's because I have been a coalface miner. There are 5,000 to 10,000 victims of the CFMEU in Central Queensland and the Hunter Valley—individual miners owed as much as $211,000, some more than $40,000 per year. It's more than $1 billion in wage theft, with workers stripped of protections, workers' compensation bypassed, coalminers insurance out, safety complaints not followed through on and workers stripped of entitlements, long service leave and leave in general.

There is a web of conflicts, with the boards of Coal Mines Insurance, Coal LSL and Coal Services all having 50 per cent directors from the CFMEU. It gives them access to miners' contact details. All of this was due to collusion of the CFMEU union bosses at the time, maintained now by the mining and energy union, in collusion with the world's largest labour hire firms and large foreign mine owners, which the Fair Work Commission endorsed and approved.

Now the Fair Work Ombudsman is saying that it will assess whether or not it is wage theft against the new enterprise agreements that were passed as a wage scam, with the CFMEU leading the way. It's disgraceful!